The We Turned Out Okay Podcast

What kind of hijinks did you get up to as a kid? Did you climb trees? Did you run around outside barefoot? Did you eat raw cookie dough?
Maybe you wanted to do these and other crazy things, but you weren't allowed…
Let me ask you this: what if your children wanted to? Would you let them?
If you hesitate there, well, you're in the right place. The We Turned Out Okay podcast is where we learn the hows and whys of hovering less and enjoying our young children more. You get to learn from host Karen Lock Kolp's mistakes, but especially from the successes of her guests. Each helpful, lively conversation illustrates why this show really is "The Modern Guide to Old-School Parenting."

We are headed into summer as I record today, a classic time for parents to worry about kids' academic work slipping. Is this a thing that you worry about? If so, you are going to love today's's show – all about six steps to creating young, happy readers!No matter when you listen, whether in the middle of an extended summer vacation or in deepest winter, you will love it, because here is where I share my six steps to having happy readers.

Listen for:How to bond with your kids over books, no matter how young or old the kids are, no matter how simple or complex the books areStrategies to stop the scourge of trying to be perfect; one of my favorite quotes is from Henry Winkler, a.k.a. the Fonz from Happy Days: "perfectionism is destructive… Beating the sh*t out of yourself is a killer"Why reading aloud is the single most important thing you can do with your children

We cover an awful lot today, so I knew you were going to want to write all this down – that's why I created a guide, Six Ways to Help Your Kids Love Reading, which you can get just by going to weturnedoutokay.com and clicking the button! As a bonus, I've got a resource section of awesome books included with the guide… Between these six steps and the resource section of awesome books, you will soon have some really happy readers in your home.

Today I share a great conversation that I had recently with my Dad. After climbing his way out of a working class neighborhood in Montréal, Canada, Dad became a very well-educated, high-powered executive at a large insurance company.

But as his daughter, I knew about that part of his life only peripherally. To me, Dad was and still is a great example of how to achieve your dreams, and especially how to live your life: Dad has an unshakable moral compass and an amazing capacity to reduce the most complex problems down to their simplest form.

Along with my Mom, whom we hear from in the Mother's Day 2015 Bonus Episode, Dad has spent the last 17 years (after retiring from the insurance company as Vice President of Customer Service) in Breckenridge, Colorado. Out there, he became a contractor to remodel their home, was a Breckenridge ski instructor for 15 years and continues to teach his grandchildren how to ski.

Together, they've traveled extensively, circling the globe in a six-month trip in 2010 and spending six months of 2014 traveling through Europe – they were using AirBnB before I knew what it was!

Mom and Dad have spent much of the last two years RVing around the US and Canada together; they hike, grill out, make friends on the road – even make and preserve jam in their camper! – always keeping in touch and illustrating the kind of fun you can have in life.

Our conversation today ranges from work, to parenthood, and into grand parenthood. I know you'll love it because, no matter where you are on the parenting timeline, or if you're a mom or a dad, you'll hear a great example of how to live your life.

Do you have a young child, especially a daughter, who desperately wants to dance – but is totally uncoordinated, or whose body doesn't look like a dancer's? If so, then you probably know already how cutthroat the world of dance studios can be.

Today's guest teaches dance in a unique studio, one where the focus is on dance as a fun way of expressing yourself, and where it doesn't matter what you look like for if you're a good dancer or not.

In addition to spending her days with tutu-clad young girls, my guest is Mom to very active tween-and teenage boys… As a result, evenings and weekends are all about cheering them on at sports, supporting them in their academic work, and enjoying a great relationship with her husband Rob (a guy who happens to be my brother :-)

Listen for:

some really great tips for choosing a dance studio; how to know you've got the right one, when to keep looking

Sue's take on raising children with special needs, and how important it is to work closely with their other parent – you both need to be on the same page to give kids with extra challenges the support they need

how to truly enjoy life, even when it's super busy or throwing challenges at you; for Sue, teaching dance has helped her care for herself, so she can be a more supportive Mom and spouse

If you take just one thing away from this episode, I hope it is this: knowing yourself and what you need to enjoy life makes everything better. And not just for you – but for your loved ones and the people you care for. My awesome sister-in-law is really hitting her stride with this, and as you listen you can hear the enthusiasm and love in her voice… She is a great example to follow, and I know you're going to love this episode!

Do you ever find yourself so stuck in the daily grind that you forget what's really important in this life? Then you are going to love today's show, all about the three most important lessons my kids have taught me. Usually, we think of this in the other direction – we are the teachers, they are the learners.

But here are three key lessons my boys have taught me:

1) Humility – how my then eight-year-old taught me to look at a homeless guy, and see a real person

Do you think of yourself as a leader? Maybe not, but as parents, the decisions we make every day – resolving conflicts, allocating money, making decisions that involve our kids – call us out as leaders whether we think of it that way or not.

I used to think of leaders only in a public or corporate sense; the president's a leader. Heads of corporations are leaders, but certainly not me! Dr. Bob Nolley's Labrador Leadership Podcast completely changed my views on leadership when I first heard him in January 2015, helping me realize that to lead has much more to do with our hearts than the size of the group we lead.

Listen for:

the Big Rocks exercise (Dr. Stephen Covey's idea) to help you figure out what's most important to you

how to make a list that will help you relax while also getting done what needs to be done

two examples of leaders in unusual places: one runs a quick-oil-change shop in Richmond, Virginia, and the other is Dr. Bob's cohost on Labrador Leadership

conflict resolution and the art of apologizing

if you take only one thing away from today's episode, I hope it is this: you are a leader! Thinking of yourself that way will help you both support the people in your life you care about most, and enjoy the life that you share with those people more.

Can you think back on your own childhood and come up with some crazy sibling-fight stories? I've heard some doozies, people being hung out windows or tied to trees by their siblings, the time a brother put green dye in a sister's hair – so the sister retaliated by pouring glitter into the brother's bed! Today, we talk about the ups and downs of brothers and sisters, both in our families growing up and in our homes as parents.

Siblings can hurt each other in lots of big and small ways; sometimes it feels like there's no good intervention. Today, I share about a book that I first read while pregnant with my second: Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. This book is the second of The Fabulous Five, five books which will transform your relationship with your children, so get reading them ASAP (here's the blog post detailing the Fab Five)! It made the list because, quite simply, if you have more than one child – or if you grew up in a family where you had at least one sibling – you will finally understand how to help when siblings fight.

Listen for how to:

make peace with childhood hurts of our own, in order to be better at handling sibling rivalry with our kids

be fair without being equal

handle when an older child says "can we give the baby back?"

Your one take away from today: it is possible to alleviate sibling rivalry! You don't have to live with fighting, jealousy, the mean tricks that siblings play on each other… Siblings Without Rivalry will help you fix it.

Today's guest Daniel Wolff has, among many other things, produced a documentary about Hurricane Katrina, been nominated for a Grammy in 2003, and written 10 books on all different subjects including the one that we spend most of our time discussing today, How Lincoln Learned To Read. Written in 2009, this book is a go-to for me whenever I need to make big decisions about about the boys' upbringing; because Mr. Wolff tells the stories of the childhoods of many prominent Americans throughout history, I learn something different from each one. Plus, a great read that's fun, interesting, historical – and makes me feel a little smarter each time I pull it off the shelf.

During today's's show, listen for:

the importance of fun in education; all these years later, we may think of Ben Franklin as old and stodgy, but almost right from the moment he could read, Franklin was quite the mischief maker

how author and scientist Rachel Carson's girlhood, during which she stayed home often from school to play and walk in the woods, helped her grow up into the advocate for national environmental change she became

a great piece of parenting advice – my guest shares that decisions became much easier for him when he to "think like a grandparent"

Sometimes as parents, we think we are limiting the risks to our kids by taking an action – or backing away from an action – when instead, their well-being and happiness would be better insured by doing something completely different. In this episode, I highlight four common things parents do (I know this, because I did them too!) where it would be better to go in the exact opposite direction.

Listen for:

the dangers of sticking close by your child's side at all times; when we do this, we take away his or her chance to develop independence, creativity, and problem-solving capabilities

the risks of using antibacterial soap; this one keeps me up at night, and it's pretty clear that it also keeps scientists and other super-smart people up at night too

how we fail our children when we don't question a teacher or other authority figure who insists that our child has ADHD or ADD; while there is some risk that our son or daughter may have these or other learning disabilities, I share that during my years of teaching young children – and earning my Masters in Early Childhood Education – these diagnoses are given out far more often than they should be; increasingly, kids are put in an environment that is far too restrictive… In short, it is my opinion that schools, and not children, are often the problem when it comes to kids' misbehavior

the importance of comics – yes, cartoons, graphic novels – in a kid's journey towards becoming a reader; when adults ban comics, or even disrespect them, we run the risk of limiting our kids' ability to thrive as readers

Whether you agree or disagree, I encourage you to really give some thought to the above Four Risks. Reasonable and intelligent adults can disagree, but the biggest risk of all that we can take is not giving consideration to any big issue that affects our children while they're young, because the effects of our choices compound when they are grown up.

Imagine parenting before the era of Google and social media, before there was 24/7 support – or at least entertainment in the form of middle-of-the-night lurking. Books are great, but difficult to hold while comforting a colicky baby at 3 AM. Now, imagine leaving your beloved home city of Montréal, Canada and relocating to a quiet suburb with nothing but houses in every direction. During the day, your husband takes the family car into work, so now you have a three-year-old and a three-month-old, no wheels, and a super expensive long-distance phone bill. A totally different world, right? My mother, Diane Lock, found herself in that situation (I was the three-year-old :-), jumped in with both feet – and thrived.

From that shaky start, my Mom went on not only to raise, along with my Dad, three children who turned out pretty well, in my completely unbiased opinion. She also has written books, started and run a catering service, and sung a solo for Pope John Paul II (we don't talk about this at all in this episode, but it is still pretty cool.)

Listen for:

The Stuffed Zucchini Theory of Parenting – how to recognize it, and how to alleviate it

An unconventional book-writing method

Successful parenting amid pretty major culture shock

This bonus episode is my chance to speak with a truly remarkable woman, my Mom. If you take just one thing away in listening today, let it be this: when our children are small, it is easy to forget that we are so much more than the arms that comfort them and clean up after them, the legs that walk them around in an endless, bouncing dance when they cry. In those times, let my mother be an example to you of how much more you are than mere arms and legs in service to your child. Remember the little grey cells between your ears – and smile.

When Michael O'Neal was growing up, his teachers repeatedly said that he: a) didn't live up to his potential, and b) talked too much. In our lively conversation today, these two ideas come up again and again, because Michael is doing much more than merely "living up to his potential," using his propensity to talk too much by helping people like me every day and making a great living at it too.

Listen for:

great stories all throughout the episode, including the one about Michael hitchhiking at nine years old, and the time he rode a bike down a mountainside

the similarities of raising kids and raising dogs

confronting and transcending our fears

why setting goals for ourselves is so important, and how to do it right

If you take only one thing away from this episode, let it be this: anxiety and enjoyment are two sides of the same coin. The more anxious you are, the less you are able to enjoy your life, and vice versa; this is especially important because anxious parents – as I was – pass on anxiety to their kids. We need to learn to limit our anxiety to heighten everybody's enjoyment.

Have you ever taken a look at your young child and wondered, how is this kid going to get along in the real world? The expectations we place on our kids, starting from when they are born, influence them all through their lives. In this episode, I take you into the future, linking what you do right now with your future child.

Listen for:

tips on figuring out what motivates a child to work hard at something – or give up

how to tell if the motivation is intrinsic, coming from within your child, or extrinsic, an expectation placed on that child by somebody else; which situation will your child work harder in?

me, dissing my Dad! (Sorry Dad…) I think my father assumed that I needed extrinsic motivation at all times, or maybe he was more concerned with his own expectations for me… But he has really reformed, and as a grandparent he's really crushing this, giving incredible love and support to his grandson and helping them achieve their dreams, and I can't wait to have him on the show to talk about this

If you take one idea away from this episode, I hope it is this: from the very start, we parents have huge power over our children in the form of expectations… And we need to use that power for good.

If you (like me) have never had to worry about where your child's next diaper, of all things, is going to come from, I think you will be surprised to know how many people face this problem every day. Michelle Sharpe, a music and early childhood intervention therapist with a background in opera, is doing something about this need, through her charity diapercircle.org. Our conversation ranges from how Michelle got into the charity biz in the first place to practical stuff every parent needs to know. Take a listen, you'll be glad you did!

In this episode, the traditional Episode 000: All About The Podcaster gets turned sideways, as I sit down with the four people outside my birth family who have known me the longest and best. We share a lot of wine and Sortilege (delicious Canadian maple whiskey) many laughs, and our unplanned adventures.

Debbie tells about being in a house fire, how the random conversation she had a week previously with a firefighter – and the good catch her now-husband made that night – helped her survive

Bridgitte shares about the challenges she has faced and lessons she's learned in dealing with fibromyalgia, a very real condition that Bridgitte's doctors sometimes doubted

Dede talks about the key role she played in the final years of her father's life, and the sorrows – and joys – she experienced during that tumultuous time

Shannon describes breaking from tradition to homeschool her three children, talking about their journey in the seven years since as "a true adventure"

I discuss the mysterious illness I've been living with for 3 1/2 years, tendinosis (chronic tendinitis, or inflammation of the tendons), and share about the scary lows and unpredicted highs I've experienced while living with this condition

This episode might be my favorite, because in it, five real women talk about the setbacks that have come into our lives, and the good that has come out of those setbacks. Unplanned adventures happen for every one of us, and I'm including you, listener, in that. Our discussion highlights the true power of looking at a setback not as a dealbreaker, but instead as a learning experience. I hope you enjoy listening to it just as much as we enjoyed creating it!